Response to Rubenstein

My thanks to Ed Rubenstein for producing a fine rejoinder (Ron Unz Vanishes Hispanic Criminality … Not!) to my own recent analysis of Hispanic crime rates (His-Panic). Most of the previous rebuttals to my original article seemed either utterly risible (Statsholic) or ideologically shrill and analytically weak (Unzism, a Dangerous Doctrine). Although I certainly disagree with the slant of Rubenstein’s interpretations, he raises some strong and quantitatively
interesting issues which provide an important contribution to the ongoing debate. This tends to confirm VDare.com’s reputation as the premier “hardcore” anti-Immigrationist webzine.

First of all, I appreciate his willingness to excerpt numerous paragraphs from my article, some of which he endorses and some of which he disputes; this allows his readers to obtain a sense of my claims without being forced to endlessly click between the two pieces. I’m also glad that he seems to accept many important aspects of my own suggested methodology, including the complete unreliability of nominal ethnic crime statistics, the importance of normalizing crime rates to the high-crime cohort of the relevant ethnic population, and the use of BJS incarceration statistics as among the most reliable, if highly imperfect, indicators of ethnic criminality. He also concedes the need to exclude Federal inmates, since the massive over-representation of Hispanics for immigration-violations and (non-resident) Hispanics in border-smuggling would severely skew the crime statistics.

The most important new point he makes — which I had completely missed in my own analysis of the data — is that between 2000 and 2006 the violent crime rates of whites and Hispanics seemed to sharply diverge.

According to the 2008 BJS report, during that half-decade, the number of whites incarcerated in state prison for violent offenses rose by just 7% while the number of Hispanics increased by a whopping 62%. Since violent crime is both the most damaging to society and also the most likely to be reported, this is a telling point. I had primarily focused upon the total number of non-federal inmates, and that data, which did not separate out violent from non-violent offenders, had shown no strong trend.

However, there are several strong caveats to Rubenstein’s finding. First, the data cited excludes the one-third of American inmates held in local jails (which was why I paid little attention to that particular table); however, since state convicts tend to be guilty of the more serious offenses, it seems unlikely that adding the jail inmates would substantially alter the violent offender ratios. We must also be cautious in placing too much weight on the short term trends of just a few years, which may be anomalous for various reasons.

Much more importantly, a central argument of my article had been that ethnic criminality is best inferred not from raw incarceration statistics but from incarceration rates relative to the size of the high-crime age ethnic population; and even just during the few years from 2000-2006, there was actually a substantial change in the relative numbers of Hispanic and white males aged 15-44 (a demographic trend which should come as no great surprise to regular VDare readers!).

Based on the Census/ACS data, the number of white males in that age range dropped by almost 10% during those years, while the corresponding number of Hispanics increased by around 15%. Thus, the age-adjusted increase in violent white inmates was actually between 15 and 20% and for Hispanics was about 40%. Although we still find a significant divergence in white/Hispanic violent criminals, simply adjusting for age cuts the nominal gap in half.

If Hispanics did indeed increase their age-adjusted rate of violent crime relative to whites by over 20% between 2000 and 2006, one explanation might be the ongoing shift of the Hispanic population from (low crime) immigrants to their (higher crime) American-born children. Although the rise in criminality is nothing close to the absurd 700% difference claimed by Rumbaut, all studies have shown that it does seem to exist, and could certainly account for a portion of the 20% increase.

However, since highest-crime age Hispanics are already two-thirds American-born, most of this increase has already occurred, and we would not expect relative violent crime rates to increase much more from this particular cause.

There are other, more empirical reasons to doubt that this apparent Hispanic increase in violent criminality continued past 2006. Consider Los Angeles, America’s most heavily Hispanic megalopolis, and a reasonably crude proxy for Mexican-Americans throughout the rest of California and perhaps even the country as a whole. As I pointed out in my article, both homicides and violent crime rates in LA dropped by about one-half between 2000 and 2009, with crime now having reached roughly the levels of Portland, Oregon, America’s whitest major city.

I’d hardly be surprised if this huge drop in LA crime rates were directly connected with the sharp simultaneous rise in Hispanic imprisonment rates we have been discussing. But with most of the violent Hispanic criminals now safely in prison and current crime rates fairly low, I suspect that future BJS reports will reveal far smaller increases in Hispanic imprisonment.

In fact, it is quite possible that even the apparent 20% or more relative increase in Hispanic violent criminality during 2000-2006 is actually just a statistical artifact. Over the years, VDare columnists have repeatedly argued that the official figure of 12 million (overwhelmingly Hispanic) illegal immigrants is a severe underestimate, and the true figure is vastly higher. Most illegal immigrants are males 15-44, and if these numbers had increased by just 2 million between 2000 and 2006—exactly the years when the housing boom was drawing so many illegal construction workers from Mexico—the BJS imprisonment totals would actually represent no net increase in violent criminality among Hispanics.

But whether or not Hispanic violent crime rates did rise by an amount in the 20-25% range, I must once again emphasize that this figure is completely dwarfed by the 200% or 300% difference in imprisonment rates between (say) white Texans and white New Jerseyans.

Finally, Rubenstein claims, much as did the Chronicles authors, that differences in the size of the local black populations are the primary factor responsible for the similar crime rates between heavily white and heavily Hispanic cities. In effect, he argues that the statistical impact of high-crime Hispanics is being masked by the presence or absence of even higher-crime blacks. Unfortunately, I find this claim completely unpersuasive, and see no evidence for it either in the comparisons of individual cities or in the overall cross-correlations. I suggest that interested readers consult Section (5) of my Chronicles response (Immigration: Facts vs. Ideology), where I refute this argument at some length. Since this rebuttal was released almost simultaneously with the VDare article, I certainly do not fault Rubenstein for failing to consider my arguments.

***************************

One additional point. Numerous critics have disputed my original suggestion that much of America’s endlessly-touted “Hispanic gang problem” appears to be a hoax, merely serving as an easy means for local elected officials to solicit media headlines and federal gang-prevention funding. But this morning’s San Jose Mercury News carried a front-page metro story which perfectly illustrates my claim (“Councilwoman proposes more ‘no gang’ zones“).

Nora Campos, a Hispanic city councilwoman who had considered a run for mayor but instead decided to seek an Assembly seat, has proposed a major expansion of anti-gang measures through San Jose in order to reduce “street gang bloodshed” among the “4,000 to 5,000 validated gang members” belonging to “140 gangs.” The local television stations quickly picked up her proposal, and heavily broadcast Campos’s “tough on crime” image over the airwaves.

Naturally, none of the reporters bothered mentioning that one-third Hispanic San Jose already has about the lowest homicide and violent-crime rates of any major city in the continental United States, with levels being close to those of Japan. I’d imagine that many American film-goers similarly believe that Yakuza gang violence has produced an
ongoing reign of terror in Toyko and Kyoto…

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87 Responses to Response to Rubenstein

The idea of a grand unifying “white race” I’m afraid, was something conjured up to extend the polity – while holding the line against others – as sort of a Plan B. This was to integrate people like the Irish and the Germans into American society, when it was found that not only were they not going away, but they were not taking no for an answer.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. After all, one of Washington’s most ferocious generals was one John Sullivan. And ever heard of Von Steuban? There are differences between whites, sure, but we also form a coherent group. Moreover, the trend among ‘hispanics’ is the opposite. They used to be considered white — with a few instances to the contrary. Now they themselves don’t consider themselves white — especially in California. The trend of assimilation is going the opposite way from that of European groups — and that is probably inevitable, because we are getting a lot of very Indian Mexicans from Southern Mexico now.

VA hospitals are run for a target audience that is used to ID’s, ranks, etc.. Civilian hospitals are not run like that. Besides, immigrants are besides the point when discussing people using emergency rooms as free health service providers? The largest group using emergency rooms as free care provider are actually American youths who do not buy insurances.

As for the Home Depot jobber, there is absolutely nothing proventing American youths doing the exact same thing as you described. The problem is with the social welfare system, not immigrant or not immigrant. The presence of immigrant labor only helped alleviate labor shortage in times of tight labor market. In case it’s not obvious, the Home Depot jobbers are not there anymore in this recession, nor are many jobs inside Home Depots selling supplies to those immigrant jobbers.

By your logic either women or men would be a lost to the cause of liberty because one of the “groups” must be pulling down less than the median wage. One of the fundamental point about spreading the idea of individual liberty, showing people the errors in their “ethnic leaders” and to think themselves as individuals, not merely members of groups. Government policies that discriminate based on group identities would only exacerbate social tensions, and push individuals towards their so-called ethnic leaders.

Violent crime is not the only kind of crime. According to some estimates as many half of illegal immigrants (a majority of whom are Hispanic) practice tax evasion by getting paid under the table. Do you think tax evasion is not a serious crime? Tell that to the IRS when they come for an audit. Furthermore, tax evasion is not a victimless crime. What you don’t pay, someone else has to make up.

Pro-tax is never a Conservative position. The Federal Government does not at all live off tax collection. The entire income tax collection, from both individuals and corporations, amounted to only $1-1.5trillion per year during the peak years of our most recent bubble. The federal bailouts alone in the last 18 months have added up to over $12trillion! How did the math ever work? The answer resides in the fact that federal government spending has little to do with tax collection. The federal government spends the money through borrowing from the Federal Reserve, which creates money out of thin air. Then income tax is collected in order to reduce individual and corporation spending power to make you yield and give way to the spending power of the government agencies and government employees that received the government money. Your neighbor figuring out ways to reduce his/her tax bill is actually a good thing for your own community as that allows more of his/her spending power intact and can be spent into the community or saved and let someone else in the community borrow it. Paying taxes is literally removing wealth from your own community for nothing in return (the government spending has long taken place already). The reason why we pay taxes is very simple: we are coerced to pay. While I do not engage in tax evasion myself, I wish my neighbors would take the risk and then have more money left over to pay for my services.

The whole scheme of government borrowing in the name of the people and then using the gun barrel to collect income tax on people to pay interest on money that never existed (created out of thin air) really just a scheme to enslave American people (taking the fruits of their labor without due compensation). . . and it has been the case at the federal level only since 1913. Such fiat money and taxation power is really at the root of the undermining of American Conservativism in the past century, as people become more and more controlled by the government and look to government for supposed solutions.

“Such nonsense would only push Hispanics and other minorities towards the the opposing camp . . . which Demographically speaking is a path for political suicide for Conservatives. ”

Which is why it is bizarre that some conservatives champion low skill immigration.

In terms of the Milton Friedman quote, it is of course used against unlimited immigration. The argument is nicely made by Alexiev here:

“This is not an immigration problem, or even an illegal-immigration problem, per se. A strong case could be made that, in terms of educational achievement, industriousness, and entrepreneurial acumen, Asian immigrants to California have proven superior to white natives of the state. Therefore, if California were to experience a wave of mass immigration from Asia, its long-term economic prospects would be improved. Today’s Hispanic immigrants would probably have the same effect if they came from the top 10 to 20 percent of their society according to those same measures of human capital rather than from its bottom rungs. But the influx has instead been composed mainly of the poorly educated, the unskilled, and the illiterate. Such immigrants will likely soon dominate the state’s overall population and politics.

Perhaps the most disingenuous myth about illegal immigrants is that they do not impose any cost on society. The reality is that even those who work and half do not, according to the Pew Hispanic Center cannot subsist on the wages they receive and depend on public assistance to a large degree. Research on Los Angeles immigrants by Harvard University scholar George J. Borjas shows that 40.1 percent of immigrant families with non-citizen heads of household receive welfare, compared with 12.7 percent of households with native-born heads. Illegal immigrants also increase public expenditures on health care, education, and prisons. In California today, illegal immigrants’ cost to the taxpayer is estimated to be $13 billion half the state’s budget deficit.

The state should stop providing welfare and other social services to illegal aliens as existing statutes demand and severely punish employers who break the law by hiring illegal immigrants. This would immediately remove powerful economic incentives for illegal immigration, and millions of illegal aliens would return to their countries. Instead, with President Obama in the White House and the Democrats controlling Congress, an amnesty for the country’s 13 million illegal immigrants may be soon to come.

Milton Friedman once said that unrestrained immigration and the welfare state do not mix. Must we wait until California catches up with Mexico to realize how right he was?

EMAIL PRINT SAVE ARTICLES & COMMENTARY The Congealing Pot–Today’s Immigrants Are Different from Waves Past
By Jason Richwine | National Review
Monday, August 24, 2009
Hispanic immigrants have not assimilated into American society as quickly as earlier waves of Europeans did. To quicken the integration of Hispanics, we should select would-be immigrants based on qualities, such as education and work experience, that will help them succeed in the United States.

iStockphoto/Krakozawr

They’re not just like the Irish–or the Italians or the Poles, for that matter. The large influx of Hispanic immigrants after 1965 represents a unique assimilation challenge for the United States. Many optimistic observers have assumed–incorrectly, it turns out–that Hispanic immigrants will follow the same economic trajectory European immigrants did in the early part of the last century. Many of those Europeans came to America with no money and few skills, but their status steadily improved. Their children outperformed them, and their children’s children were often indistinguishable from the “founding stock.” The speed of economic assimilation varied somewhat by ethnic group, but three generations were typically enough to turn “ethnics” into plain old Americans.

This would be the preferred outcome for the tens of millions of Hispanic Americans, who are significantly poorer and less educated on average than native whites. When immigration skeptics question the wisdom of importing so many unskilled people into our nation at one time, the most common response cites the remarkable progress of Europeans a century ago. “People used to say the Irish or the Poles would always be poor, but look at them today!” For Hispanics, we are led to believe, the same thing will happen.

But that claim isn’t true. Though about three-quarters of Hispanics living in the U.S. today are either immigrants or the children of immigrants, a significant number have roots here going back many generations. We have several ways to measure their intergenerational progress, and the results leave little room for optimism about their prospects for assimilation.

The Hispanic rate of assimilation from the first to the second generation is only slightly lower than the assimilation rate of more successful groups of immigrants.Before detailing some of those analyses, we should recognize the importance of this question. If we were to discover that, say, Slovenian immigrants did not assimilate over several generations, there would be little cause for alarm. There are simply too few Slovenian Americans to change our society in a meaningful way. Hispanics, on the other hand, have risen from 4 percent to 15 percent of the American population since 1970. The Census Bureau projects that, if there is no change in immigration policy, 30 percent of the nation will be Hispanic by 2050. To avoid developing a large economic underclass, we need to confront the question of whether they will assimilate

The children of Hispanic immigrants (the second generation) actually stay in school much longer and earn a considerably higher wage than their parents. In fact, the Hispanic rate of assimilation from the first to the second generation is only slightly lower than the assimilation rate of more successful groups of immigrants. Most second-generation Hispanics make up nearly as much ground as the children of European immigrants would if they grew up in the same disadvantaged situation.

But the good news ends there, and two problems arise. First, the second generation still does not come close to matching the socioeconomic status of white natives. Even if Hispanics were to keep climbing the ladder each generation, their assimilation would be markedly slower than that of other groups. But even that view is overly optimistic, because of the second, larger problem with Hispanic assimilation: It appears to stall after the second generation. We see little further ladder-climbing from the grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants. They do not rise out of the lower class.

The most straightforward statistical evidence of this stall in Hispanic assimilation comes from the Current Population Survey (CPS), which asks respondents their ethnicity, where they were born, and where their parents were born. From this information we can construct an account of the first generation (foreign-born), the second generation (born in the U.S. with at least one foreign-born parent), and the “3+” generations (born in the U.S. to two U.S.-born parents) among the Hispanic respondents.

This chart shows how Hispanic Americans compare with white natives generation by generation. The annual earnings of second-generation Hispanic men are substantially higher than those of the first generation. However, the 3+ generations have about the same earnings as the second, still well below white natives. No generational progress beyond the second generation is evident.

The educational picture does not look much better. The children of Hispanic immigrants are much better educated than their parents. However, American-born Hispanics still have high dropout and low college-completion rates compared with white natives, and there is little improvement from the second to the 3+ generations. Again, progress stalls.

These results do not depend on the time period considered. Economists Jeffrey Grogger and Stephen Trejo reached the same conclusions when they used CPS data from the mid-1990s for a similar analysis of Mexican Americans. And other datasets tell the same story. One study reported results from the Latino National Political Survey, conducted in 1989 and 1990. Among its striking findings was that the percentage of Mexican-American households with incomes higher than $50,000 rose from 7 percent in the first generation to 11 percent in the second. But the same statistic in the third and fourth generations stayed at 11 percent, at a time when the national rate was 24 percent. Another study, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, began tracking a representative sample of young Americans in 1979. By 1993, the Hispanic 3+ generations in that sample had, if anything, slightly worse outcomes than the second generation in terms of wages, educational attainment, and cognitive test scores.

The studies discussed so far are cross-sectional–statistical snapshots captured at single points in time. Since each of the generations being compared lives in the same era, the second-generation respondents are not the actual children of the first generation, nor are the third-generation respondents the children of the second. But longitudinal studies–taking one cohort of Hispanic immigrants, then examining their children and their children’s children over several decades–tell a similarly pessimistic story.

Economist James P. Smith pieced together census and CPS data starting in 1940 and ending in 1997. He was able to compare eight different immigrant birth cohorts with their children and grandchildren in later years. Smith found that, contrary to the cross-sectional studies, the Hispanic educational deficit relative to whites did become smaller between the second and 3+ generations. This might indicate an increase in their skills relative to whites, but it might also reflect the trend in the mid-20th century for working-class people to stay in school longer. Did the educational gains for Hispanics affect their relative earning power?

Not by much. The table below, reproduced from Smith’s study, shows average Hispanic-American and Mexican-American earnings by birth cohort and generation as a percentage of average white-native earnings. In the six most recent cohorts, the Hispanic panel shows only modest gains from the second to the 3+ generations. For example, Hispanic immigrants born between 1915 and 1919 earned 70.9 percent of what contemporary white natives earned. The children of those immigrants earned 82.3 percent, and the immigrants’ grandchildren earned 84.8 percent.

For Mexicans in particular the picture is even worse. In five of the six most recent birth cohorts, the Mexican 3+ generations earn a marginally lower fraction of the white-native wage than does the second generation.

A similar longitudinal analysis was recently conducted by UCLA sociologists Edward E. Telles and Vilma Ortiz. They revived a 1960s-era cross-sectional survey of Mexican Americans by re-interviewing many of the original respondents more than 40 years later. By adding information about the parents and children of the respondents in this second survey wave, the authors were able to construct a longitudinal dataset similar to Smith’s. Their results show continued improvement in high-school-graduation rates from the second to the 3+ generations, but small gains in college graduation and stagnant relative wages.

Taken as a whole, the research on Hispanic assimilation presents two possible conclusions. Either Hispanic assimilation will be exceedingly slow–taking at least four or five generations, and probably several more–or it will not happen. In either case, Hispanic immigration will have a serious long-term consequence: The grandchildren of today’s Hispanic immigrants will lag far behind the grandchildren of today’s white natives.

So why do Hispanics, on average, not assimilate? Theories abound. Popular explanations from the left include the legacy of white racism, labor-market discrimination, housing segregation, and poor educational opportunities. Those on the right tend to cite enforced multiculturalism, ethnic enclaves, and a self-perpetuating culture of poverty. One would need a whole book to sort out these competing explanations, but we can safely say that none of them, even if true, suggests easy solutions. Social scientists have not devised any set of programs that effectively spurs assimilation.

That assimilation has stalled even among third-generation Hispanics growing up today is especially sobering. In the early 20th century, the quality of schools varied greatly, high-school graduation was unusual, travel was relatively difficult, and universities and employers were free to discriminate based on ethnicity. Today all but the worst inner-city schools are well funded, high-school graduation is expected, traveling around the country to look for work is much easier, and affirmative-action programs give preferences to Hispanics. Despite these advantages over earlier immigrants, today’s Hispanics have not closed the socioeconomic gap with white natives.

Though continuing research on the barriers to Hispanic assimilation will be valuable, the reality is that no intervention in the foreseeable future will change the very slow and perhaps nonexistent assimilation process into a fast and effective one.

The consequences of a large ethno-cultural group’s lagging behind the majority in education and income are significant. In strictly economic terms, perpetually poor immigrants and their descendants will be a major strain on social spending and infrastructure. Health care, public education, welfare payments, the criminal justice system, and programs for affordable housing will all require more tax dollars. When pro-immigration conservatives declare that these government programs should be scaled back or eliminated entirely, I am sympathetic. But a large public sector is a reality that cannot be wished away–we will not be abolishing Medicaid or public schools anytime soon. Immigration policy needs to take that reality into account.

….

Of course, precisely which factors to select for is itself a controversial question, and should be debated in the political arena. But that debate can begin only when we let go of our sepia-toned memories of immigration past. Who gets in really does matter, and we should not let the success of Europeans who came here a hundred years ago obscure that fact.

“By your logic either women or men would be a lost to the cause of liberty because one of the “groups” must be pulling down less than the median wage.”

If you cared enough about reality to actually study it, you’d realize that:

1. Women as a group have lower wages than Men.

2. Women as a group are much more likely to vote for the Big Government candidate.

A critical difference between Genders and Races, though, is that the Gender Balance isn’t getting worse for the cause of Liberty every year.

The Racial Balance IS getting worse for Liberty every single year, though, thanks to Pro-Open Borders ideologues like yourself.

The other important difference is that the discrepancy between Men and Women in their Voting Patterns is much smaller than the difference between Whites and Non-Whites.

Non-Whites are the shock troops of the Welfare State, and soon enough people like you will be so much political dead meat, overwhelmed by the swarm.

And even if you manage to take over the Republicans with your Anti-Government ideas, it won’t do you the slightest good as the Republican Party will have as much chance of winning an American Election as a Jewish Party would’ve had a chance of winning in Nazi Germany.

Life as a minority isn’t so much fun, as the likes of you will find out.

“Government policies that discriminate based on group identities would only exacerbate social tensions, and push individuals towards their so-called ethnic leaders.”

That’s absurd. Blacks are discriminated in favor of, and they are MORE Racial than any other American group.

Whites are discriminated against, and they are LESS Racial than any other American group.

The power of Ethnic Leaders doesn’t come from Government Discrimination.

What are you saying? That if Illegal Aliens were deported and we cut off Legal Immigration from Third World hellholes, that it would make La Raza more powerful?

Complete and utter poppycock.

It would actually make La Raza LESS powerful, because they’d have less members to draw power and money from.

Red Phillips, on February 26th, 2010 at 3:50 pm Said:
Is a Japanese person who wants to keep Japan Japanese and resists having it overtaken by a foreign culture and ethnic group an ideologue? Likewise, is an Israeli who wants to keep Israel Jewish and resists having it become overrun with … oh I don’t know … Arabs maybe … an ideologue? In fact, this is an entirely natural and understandable human response. There is in fact already a name to describe people who want to preserve their ancestral home, but it isn’t ideologue. They are called conservatives.

So why is Matthew Roberts’ and Steve Burton’s analysis “ideologically shrill?” They are articulating a position that is entirely natural and flows from the order of things. It is actually the idea that mass immigration is a grand thing that is ideologically driven, based as it is on a purely ideological understanding of America as a “proposition nation” different from all others. This is the truly ideologically charged opinion. And there is another name for if. We call it liberal.

End quote

But do Liberals in Japan and Israel support the displacement of the dominant ethnic group in their countries? A better question is why do those who wish for Israel to remain Jewish(ADL) don’t want America to remain European and Christian?

So now the topic is switched over to IQ. Are you going to champion Jewish and Asian immigration to the US then? After all, in the same studies that you showed Hispanics and Blacks in the US to have lower IQ, Jews and Asian (test subjects) in the US have shown to have higher IQ than Whites. IMHO, the tests suffer from several inherent sampling biases:

1. The “crossover” among Blacks and Hispanics in the US. Due to social-economic pressure in the past (and present), many “Whites” in the US knowingly or unknowingly hide a partial Black or Hispanic ancestry in their past as the skin color got progressively lighter due to sexual selection. The same selection process was also working along upward mobility. It’s like letting a bowl of hot water stand, after the molecules with the highest energy evaporate, the average energy among the remaining water molecules is less and reflected in the lowering of temperature. This theory is easily born out by the fact that recent immigrants from both Africa and the Caribean show higher IQ, academic and social achievement than average American blacks that have had a long line of ancestors in America.

2. Conversely, the most upward mobile Blacks and Hispanics becoming “Whites” over the generations due to the “crossover” process also lifted average of “Whites” . . . just like a bowl of water hit with hot steam (high energy water molecules) injection would see its temperature rise. Temperature is simply an indication of average molecular Brownian motion energy level.

3. Maternity care and early education. That may explain why kids born to Asian, Jewish and relatively well-off White families have higher IQ.

4. The fact that Jews and Asians in other parts of the world experienced horrendous mortality rate and experienced severe restrictions by overseas governments may have worked as a selective process culling the gene pool that could reach the American shores. I doubt any ethnic group would want to put themselves through that kind culling, just to have a couple generations of high IQ. IQ is not everything; looks, physique, memory, etc. can be just as important or more important in sexual selection in peace time. A high IQ genetic trait selected for survival in disasterous times that allowed polygamy (i.e. good providers) can be quite useless in peaceful prosperous times when monogamy is the rule of the society. The stereotypes about Nordic warriors vs. Southern European lovers reflects some that genetic strategic difference. It takes all sorts to make the world an interesting place.

“Ethnic cleansing”? Since when is there a Hispanic government in California that kick out Whites in the last 100 years? Like I said above, IQ is not everything. However, random use of big words do not reflect well upon the person doing that.

There is a huge difference between “championing low skill immigration” vs. advocating a small-government approach towards population migration. It’s just like one can be a devout Christian and still believe in freedom of religion; one can be free of any drug use (or even alcohol or cigarette, like I do), and still for legalizing drugs for others . . . or even my advocacy for your right to free speech even though I don’t agree with what you just said. The reason is quite simple: a government big enough to control what you can say would inevitably be too big for my own good; a government big enough to control what you can put in your own body would inevitably be too big for my own good; a government big enough to control who can go where and have to produce national ID to go about it would inevitably become too big and too restrictive for our own good.

Now getting on to the statistics. First of all, non-citizens do not equal illegal immigrants. There are many types of non-citizens who are in this country quite legally, and for very good reasons, such as students, businessmen, diplomats, refugees, all their family members, etc. etc. It’s kinda hard to fault them to be on the receiving end of assistance when you are advocating strict enforcement of laws against them seeking jobs at the same time. Why bother wasting money on two sets of bureacracies to do both? Why not just remove the restrictions against them supporting themselves? I’m certainly against government welfare, regardless where the recipient is born. If we reduce the government to a size small enough, most people should be able to take care of themselves . . . and competing private charities will take care of the rest far better than government monopolies.

“A strong case could be made that, in terms of educational achievement, industriousness, and entrepreneurial acumen, Asian immigrants to California have proven superior to white natives of the state. Therefore, if California were to experience a wave of mass immigration from Asia, its long-term economic prospects would be improved. Today’s Hispanic immigrants would probably have the same effect if they came from the top 10 to 20 percent of their society according to those same measures of human capital rather than from its bottom rungs.”

The perversity of immigration restriction is that restrictive laws prevent the “most desirable” immigrants from coming to our country while do nothing to prevent “the undesirables.” It’s like gun-control laws: when the guns are outlawed, only the outlaws have guns. Man-made laws have disproportionate effect on law-abiding upstanding members of the society. The natural laws, including the natural tendency of people to protect themselves and to move themselves to places of opportunity, tend to be much less constrained by irrational man-made laws in the less prosperous sectors of the society simply due to necessity. That’s also the reason why in times of recession like we have now, all sorts of irrational man-made laws get discarded as a broader and broader segment of the society has to operate with natural laws instead of sticking with irrational man-made laws. That’s the silver lining of economic hard times: liberty is reborn and freed from the constricts of un-natural man-made laws due to necessity.

“If you cared enough about reality to actually study it, you’d realize that:
1. Women as a group have lower wages than Men.
2. Women as a group are much more likely to vote for the Big Government candidate.”

So would you advocate restricting women from voting? Women have become the majority of voters over the last few decades. Of course not. The key is to get enough members of that “group” to think for themselves, so that the balance is tilted in favor of liberty. The young, especially the students, also make much lower wages than the rest of the population; proportionally speaking, probably much more drastic than either gender or racial difference. The liberty cause has made great inroads with them in recent years. Idea is a powerful thing. Let’s not become lazy or defeatist and lose faith in the power of ideas. Subcontracting the power of persuation to government guns is not free but in all likelihood extremely expensive, both in terms of money and in terms of liberty for the all of us.

I’m opposed to discrimination against all groups. When talking about liberty, it’s not necessary to identify racial groups . . . for the love for liberty is innate to all individuals, regardless race or gender. Individuals only run to the crutch of race or gender identity when they feel threatened . . . and then everyone gets exploited by identity politicians. The best way to get women and minority groups to join the cause of liberty is not to discriminate against any of them. It’s important to keep in mind that in most elections it’s the 3-7% swing voters that make the difference one way or another.

“That if Illegal Aliens were deported and we cut off Legal Immigration from Third World hellholes, that it would make La Raza more powerful?”

Please think through what your proposition entails. Have we succeeded in deporting all drugs or cutting off drug import in the last 30 years of War on Drugs? Drugs don’t even grow legs and can run and hide by themselves. A putative “War on Immigrants” would simply result in mass fraud, national ID, and all the rest unpleasantness, while having very little effect on reality on the ground after spending billions of our tax money. Organizations like La Raza would indeed become much more powerful under those circumstances just like the War on Drugs has made drug lords much more powerful. I thought the difference between Conservatives vs. “Liberals” is our ability to think through human nature and consequences of government actions instead of believing in the omnipotence of government say-so. I used to joke about if the “liberals” really want healthcare for all, they should just pass a law making disease illegal. LOL. Having a law that says millions of individuals are “illegal” just by their mere existence is a little like that. The fact that we do not yet have a thoroughly corrupt society is because those irrational man-made laws are not strictly enforced.

“Mercer,
By your logic either women or men would be a lost to the cause of liberty because one of the “groups” must be pulling down less than the median wage.”

Have you looked at any exit polls on how single women vote?
It is not for small government.

“Government policies that discriminate based on group identities would only exacerbate social tensions, and push individuals towards their so-called ethnic leaders.”

What do you mean “would”? You write as if widespread affirmative action based on group identities does not already exist. Are you ignorant of all the affirmative action policies in government and corporate America?

You sound like you are living in a libertarian fantasy land not in 21st century America.

***3. Maternity care and early education. That may explain why kids born to Asian, Jewish and relatively well-off White families have higher IQ. ****

Tim,

There is interesting data that on the SAT, kids from european households with annual incomes of $20,000 to $30,000 outscore african-american kids from households with annual incomes of $80,000 to $100,000. John Ogbu also noted this in Shaker Heights, but attributed it to cultural factors.

There is also interesting adoption data on kids adopted from Southeast Asia, half of whom had been hospitalized for malnutrition, but performed above the US average. There was a similar result in Belgium.

“Have you looked at any exit polls on how single women vote?
It is not for small government.”

So would you advocate banning all single women from voting? If you do that, you are going to lose all single-woman votes. A far more viable goal is not to win all single-woman votes, or to win a majority of single woman votes (BTW, that may also be an achievable goal), but a more immediate goal is to win enough single-woman votes to give the liberty cause an majority in the overall electorate.

As for affirmative action, of course I’m against affirmative action. Two wrongs do not make a right. The same applies to any proposed draconian anti-immigration measures. It is impossible to use a new set of government coercion to correct the damage done by existing or past government coercions. The only solution to social ills is removing government coercion . . . i.e. smaller government.

It is not at all “theoretical.” We are in so much trouble now precisely because too many politicians have taken too many shortcuts and “bandages” in the past to correct perceived wrongs. Individuals have an uncanny ability to take advantage of the Unconstitutional aspects in those shortcuts and “bandages” . . . The recognition of human nature to exploit holes in ad hot regulations and irrational laws is precisely the reason why the Founding Fathers came up with the Constitution. The failure to sticking to the “theoretical” strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution is precisely what have brought us so much trouble. How many times do we have to monkey around with Unconstitutional ad hoc rules to correct previous Unconstitutional ad hoc rules? As Einstein once said, insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again expect a different result this time.

Thank you for bringing all the links. Check out the points (1), (2), and (4) in my original post above. I tried to address some of the potential gene pool changes due to various social-economic factors as non-offensively as possible but nonetheless might make many on both the left and the right squirm; e.g. the “crossover” issue that affect the resulting “White” and the “Black”/Hispanic gene pool, and the utter political catastrophies that visited the overseas Jewish and Asian populations in the 20th century that must have exerted a profound selective pressure. When a substantial proportion of the population was wiped out, like during the Holocaust and during the various communist mass slaughters, getting a seat on the refugee boat or just surviving it at all probably required a certain above-average intelligence. However, such a selective bias may well be short-lived after a few generations of pressure removal. I have a 140+ IQ, and score a close to perfect SAT test . . . however neither criteria is what I go by when selecting mate. Even if I put intelligence above beauty and physical attractiveness when selecting my mate, there is no pressure on my children to do the same in a normal environment.

More importantly, what’s wrong with having a few more beautiful people or people with better body physiques? IQ is not everything. That brings to the even more important objection I have against government setting standards on who is allowed who is not: the bureaucrats’ template of merit is guaranteed to be out-of-date and ossifying, and corruption-causing on top of it all. If degree requirement is the guage, then we might just end up importing a whole bunch excellent test-takers born and bred to be bureaucrats . . . that might become highly detrimental to the cause of liberty, until they are sufficiently exposed to the idea of liberty anyway. IMHO, the free market place is much better suited to selecting what kind of talent we need to import . . . just like the free market place is much better suited to selecting what kind of medicine should be delivered, what kind of hamburger should be sold. Whoever can hack in the free market place here should be the real and only viable criterium. That would remove much of the subterfuge and bribery in the process. Given that most capital stock in this country are in the hands of English-speakers, this free-market approach would also foster integration, instead of a bureaucratic approach that inevitably leads to “representation” and “translators.”

In terms of selection pressures I think you’ll find they go back further than the past century. A paper a few years ago by John Hawks found there had been accelerated genetic change around the time groups first developed agriculture. The findings are discussed in a recent book ‘The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution’ by Harpending and Cochran.

In terms of Ashkenazi Jews the paper by Cochran, Harpending & Henry suggests there was selection pressure, but more in terms of being restricted to quite cognitively demanding jobs in medieval Europe. Steven Pinker has suggested it would be subject to a relatively straight forward test, but that hasn’t happened because the topic is too uncomfortable.

***However, such a selective bias may well be short-lived after a few generations of pressure removal. I have a 140+ IQ, and score a close to perfect SAT test . . . however neither criteria is what I go by when selecting mate. Even if I put intelligence above beauty and physical attractiveness when selecting my mate, there is no pressure on my children to do the same in a normal environment.***

I would argue that simply by going to College you are going to be mixing with people of above average intelligence. So the likelihood is that you’ll select a mate who is also above average (there are some interesting papers on assortative mating on the web).

***More importantly, what’s wrong with having a few more beautiful people or people with better body physiques? IQ is not everything. That brings to the even more important objection I have against government setting standards on who is allowed who is not: the bureaucrats’ template of merit is guaranteed to be out-of-date and ossifying, and corruption-causing on top of it all. If degree requirement is the guage, then we might just end up importing a whole bunch excellent test-takers born and bred to be bureaucrats . ***

Nothing is wrong with that, but as the economy and society becomes more complex having a certain level of mental ability becomes more important. There is an interesting body of research showing the impact of education and intelligence on a number of macro level outcomes:

“A large amount of studies published in the last two decades has shown that cognitive ability levels of societies are relevant for the development of positively valued aspects of peoples and countries. Following an economic research tradition “human capital” is relevant for economic growth and wealth (Hanushek & Kimko, 2000; Lynn & Vanhanen, 2002, 2006; Jones & Schneider, 2006; Weede, 2006; Rindermann, 2008a). In addition, cognitive ability of nations has a positive impact on political development, in that it helps building up democracy, the rule of law and political liberty (Simpson, 1997; Rindermann, 2008b). Intelligence, knowledge and the intelligent use of knowledge also have beneficial effects on health, for instance they act as a brake on the spread of HIV (Oesterdiekhoff & Rindermann, 2007; Lakhanpal & Ram, 2008; Rindermann & Meisenberg, 2009).

Finally, cognitive competence is relevant for the development of modernity as a societal and especially as a cultural phenomenon consisting of education, autonomy, liberty, morality and rationality (Habermas, 1985/1981; Meisenberg, 2004; Oesterdiekhoff, 2008; Lynn, Harvey & Nyborg, 2009).

Societies at a higher ability level develop more complex, more evidence-based, more ethical and more rational world views.”

Talent Development & Excellence Vol. 1, No. 1, 2009, 3-25

iratde.org/issues/1-2009/tde_issue_1-2009_03_rindermann_et_al.pdf

“IMHO, the free market place is much better suited to selecting what kind of talent we need to import”

Right, but you also have a welfare state apparatus that is taxpayer funded. Over time is that going to be sustainable? According to the article by Alexiev above, it doesn’t seem so.

More generally, there is an interesting article about how the free market can go wrong here by George Monbiot (ignore the provocative title).

Brendan – it might be helpful if you followed a bit of your own advice about presenting a “relatively reasoned argument”. You do not, as a matter of fact, present any new evidence or arguments in your comment, merely amplify the rather silly implication of your original comment – viz., that the people arguing against Mr. Unz’s position are ignorant of the history of attitudes toward, and discrimination against, immigrants in this country. You may be aware that “the situations [between the Irish and current Hispanic immigration] are not entirely the same”, but you entered the thread with a comment carrying an implicit claim that they were indeed substantially the same. You should now back that up, or retract it. But trust me Brendan, nobody who takes an interest in this issue hasn’t seen near-verbatim samples of your comment at least a thousand times over. In the interests of the higher quality debate you seek, perhaps you should re-examine your assumption that anybody is having his sheltered ideological world rocked by exposure to an exceptionally stale bit of rhetoric.

Your latter comment is essentially an expansion of the same. If you read Sailer, you are familiar with the data and arguments on how Hispanic groups differ from earlier immigrant groups. So if substantive debate is what you seek, why don’t you kick it up a notch and offer some cogent criticisms of those arguments? Because it isn’t news to anybody that WASPS didn’t much like the Irish and that they discriminated against them, or that anti-Catholic sentiments didn’t exist, and didn’t (don’t) persist. (And again, none of this was the simple irrational bigotry. Hell, considering the lack of respect the Church is now evincing for this country’s borders and sovereignty, you have to grant the ol’ Know-Nothings may have had a point there.)

It is equally unlikely that persons of Irish ancestry aren’t familiar with every variation of “white n*****” that got tossed around back in the day. Newcomers always get kicked around, and people don’t like strangers showing up in large numbers in their homelands. That I, after many years of following this debate, do not give the immense dispositive weight that you do to the fact that some Brahmin dissed my great-grandmother, is not an indication that I am unaware of the phenomenon.

On that last point, if you’d like to factually and reasonably dispute interpretations, I’d be interested to read your debunking of the scholarly claims made here.

The presence of immigrant labor only helped alleviate labor shortage in times of tight labor market. In case it’s not obvious, the Home Depot jobbers are not there anymore in this recession, nor are many jobs inside Home Depots selling supplies to those immigrant jobbers.

1) Tim, repeat after me, there is no such thing as a labor shortage in a free market, even one bounded by national frontiers. If people cannot hire enough labor at a given price, they raise wages. If their product or service isn’t profitable enough to support increased wages, they go into another business.

Or, perhaps, they move their outside the US. That’s not altogether bad. There is, for example, no way the almost entirely immigrant labor force of ‘American’ Apparel is paying their were in terms of taxes, especially if you count educating their children. Some American farmers/agrobusinesses have started renting land in Mexico (its hard to buy it outright — still) . They have moved production of low value added, high labor crops there. And that’s a good thing

2) There are still plenty of Mexican/Central American day laborers hanging around Home Depot, street corners etc here in SoCal.

Law enforcement reports a rise of Hispanic gangs in Tennessee http://www.tennessean.com/gangs/index.html Fortunately, thanks to Mr. Unz, we can relax, secure in the knowledge that these cops are just hallucinating.

And thanks, Tim, for helping us to understand that an invasion of Third World people will enrich us with the blesssings of liberty and prosperity. During the past 40 years, immigration certainly has made California far less crowded, insolvent, socialistic and Democrat than it used to be.

Thank you again for the links. One thing important to keep in mind when dealing with evolutionary biology is that the things that are “important” is not what we normally consider important or desirable, but sheer reproductive success (and the reproductive success among the immediate offsprings). So get pregnant early and get pregnant often is a successful strategy in a prosperous society where nobody is starving to death; on the other hand, having a zeal for career and put off reproduction can be genetic suicide. IMHO, the minimum mental accuity required to survive in a modern society is much lower than our ancestors who had to deal with much more adversity in their daily lives.

As for the link between successful society and the IQ of the population . . . the high IQ of Asians, and the horrendous societal structures that they had overseas for much of the last 500+ years attest to the failure of that theory. Even among Westerners and “Whites,” if one is to take that theory to 1750 and make a snap judgement between France and Britain, one would have to say the French were far better educated and had far more (state-sponsored) intellectuals. French was literally the Lingua Franca of the world (among educated Europeans anyway). Yet, Britain turned out to be the far more successful country than France in the next 200 years. Why? Because British government was far less interventionist. All the interventionist schemes dreamed by the highly intelligent and highly educated French intelligentsia went nowhere, just like their counterparts in the Far East. The populations’ ready submission to the “wisemen” made it all the worse. IMHO, much of the study between IQ and societal development is akin to the study of head shapes and brain cranium a century ago: it’s all little more than a bunch of middle-aged men trying to find ways to prove why they themselves were superior.

The fundamental problem with Monbiot’s article is the classic error that “Liberals” commit (not saying Monbiot is a “liberal”): the elevation of the observer/interventionist above the game and to god-like status. If “Our genetic inheritance makes us smart enough to see that when the old society breaks down, we should appease those who are more powerful than ourselves, and exploit those who are less powerful. The survival strategies which once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract” then how can anyone be allowed to wield the coercive power of the government? If we think people are so bad that they can not behave without being watched all the time, then how can they be given the coercive power to abuse others? Who is going to watch the watchers? Both the French and Asians fell for that intellectual trap, and made a hash of their societies. Education, especially who that is promoted and sponsored by the state, has a tendency to create and attract people like that who think themselves are above the game . . . when in reality they too have children to feed, wives to support, and friends to look after, even if they did not need food, clothing or shelter, all of which are limited resources, for themselves. LOL.

“And thanks, Tim, for helping us to understand that an invasion of Third World people will enrich us with the blesssings of liberty and prosperity. During the past 40 years, immigration certainly has made California far less crowded, insolvent, socialistic and Democrat than it used to be.”

Correlation is not causation. Otherwise, you might as well argue that your own birth a few decades ago is the cause of all our troubles. California’s troubles is first and foremost the natural result from the growth and expansion of government. People moving from the other 49 states and the rest of the world to California is the least of its problems. Even the welfare system pays far more to the bureaucrats up and down the chain than to the supposed recipients. The public education system is bankrupt because of union contracts. The healthcare system is bankrupt because something as simple as a surgical knife cost upwards of $1000! There are far more young Americans seeking free healthcare at Emergency rooms than illegal immigrants are . . . yet even they are not really the root problem . . . because all those services have very little incremental marginal cost. The billings on these services have very little to do with reality (on average only 4% of the full price billed amount is paid; that’s not a typo). The real high cost comes from the nature of monopolies. Just like towns run out of money not because they have too many policemen, firefighters or teachers, or too much crime too much fire or too many students . . . but because the politicians have too much on other things, and public jobs pay too much, both in terms of salary and benefits.

Invasion means forcible political take-over of a geographical region. If you invite a few friends over for dinner at your house, your friends are not invading your town; nor are you are a traitor to your town. It is your right and your freedom to invite whoever you’d like to your own house. Nobody has the right to impede travel by you or your friends on public roads because the roads are public domain. Anyone desires strict government control over public domain is merely making the first step for fascism.

Not wanting too many immigrants and advocating a big and strong bureaucracy to enforce population migration control are two entirely different issues. It’s like not wanting guns falling into the hands criminals is quite understandable, but supporting a gun ban to supposed achieve that is utter political stupidity; not wanting drugs harming children is understandable, but supporting a war on drugs is utter political stupidity. Government coercion almost always fails at the top end of the society and the fat bottom end. If you want a disarmed middle class, and only criminal (and the super rich at the top) have guns, a gun ban is the way to achieve it. If you want illegal drugs become the funding mechanism for all sorts of illegal gang activities, a war on drugs is the way to achieve it. If you want keep would-be middle-class productive immigrant out and let the incoming migrants disproportionately represented by “dregs of the society,” forceful immigration control is the way to achieve it; if you want to identity fraud and bribaries to run amok throughout the US, interior enforcement of immigration control is the way to achieve it. It is no coincidence that the first thing sex slave traffickers do to their victims worldwide is taking away the victims’ passports etc.. The government enforcement against immigrants is used as a source of revenue generation and making the trafficking profitable.

The real answer to illegal immigration is removing the welfare state. Having a welfare program supposedly to help people by their place of birth in the form of immigration control is not going to help matters . . . as we conservatives should know, one of the worst things that can happen to you is being helped by the government, for it always ends up costing you far more than you are helped.

Information flow is not instantaneous; i.e. new information is not instantly absorbed by all societal members all at the same time (which is why having multiplicity of opinions, experiences and preferences co-exist is so important; some of them may just have the new “bright ideas,” ahead of others.) Price adjustment is not instantaneous and not “global”; otherwise, nobody would be trading in stock market or goods market. If all goods/financial instruments are perfectly priced at all time, trading would be a complete waste of time. We live under a fiat money system, with its boom and bust cycles. The migrant workers, even the “unskilled” ones, help to dampen the boom and bust cycles caused by the fiat money interventionists. Would you rather have American lawn care workers see their wages skyrocket in boom times and take out even bigger loans to bid up housing prices even more because there were no relatively inexpensive labor to build new houses? then have the bust dive even deeper and widespread bankruptcies even more severe when the bust cycle comes??

In a free market place, the flow of goods and labor should be a common phenomenom. The inflow of goods and labor helps avoid local uneconomic resource allocation due to temporary local “shortage” and price spikes. You and I agree that some low productivity jobs are better shipped overseas (we have some work to do convincing some our fellow conservatives of that). That being said, IMHO, high quality food export on express shipment may just become a viable American export to balance our trade with China, where the quality of food is thoroughly ruined by their hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats milling around supposedly taking charge of food quality control (you know, all the food poison scares that we hear so much in the news half a world away; must be really bad there for us to hear about it). Food and fresh produce/catch prices worldwide may well go much much higher, and that might just make some of those jobs viable in the US, with or without immigrant labor. Well, that’s assuming Chinese economy doesn’t collapse first under their own stimulus nonsense.

##the high IQ of Asians, and the horrendous societal structures that they had overseas for much of the last 500+ years attest to the failure of that theory. Even among Westerners and “Whites,” if one is to take that theory to 1750 and make a snap judgement between France and Britain, one would have to say the French were far better educated and had far more (state-sponsored) intellectuals. French was literally the Lingua Franca of the world (among educated Europeans anyway). Yet, Britain turned out to be the far more successful country than France in the next 200 years. Why? Because British government was far less interventionist. All the interventionist schemes dreamed by the highly intelligent and highly educated French intelligentsia went nowhere, just like their counterparts in the Far East. The populations’ ready submission to the “wisemen” made it all the worse. IMHO, much of the study between IQ and societal development is akin to the study of head shapes and brain cranium a century ago: it’s all little more than a bunch of middle-aged men trying to find ways to prove why they themselves were superior.##

Tim,

I agree that ultimately they need appropriate economic and political systems to utilise the human capital. Otherwise they can stifle it like China did for centuries. I think the point is that the human capital (in that article they focus on ‘smart fractions’ as being particularly important) is a pre-requisite for development. They’re fairly agnostic about how much it can be improved, noting that the genes involved haven’t been identified to date.

Again, they note that these things are subject to nutrition and environmental factors too.

##iThe survival strategies which once ensured cooperation among equals now ensure subservience to those who have broken the social contract” then how can anyone be allowed to wield the coercive power of the government? if we think people are so bad that they can not behave without being watched all the time, then how can they be given the coercive power to abuse others? Who is going to watch the watchers? Both the French and Asians fell for that intellectual trap, and made a hash of their societies.##

Yes, well those are fair points. I guess in theory things like separation of powers, free press etc are meant to keep things in check.

Tim: In this case immigration is the cause of the correlation. Just whom do you think it is who is voting for all the left-wing and statist politicians who have made California such a welfare paradise? Forty years ago, before the immigration tsumami, such politicians were a lot less plentiful in the Golden State. Yes, it would be nice to get rid of the welfare state, but how’s that going to happen when poor, statist-minded immigrants keep growing the constituency for welfare? A prominent Democrat stategist, Robert Creamer, argues that mass immigration is the key to “progressives,” [i.e., socialists,] taking control of this country. He and his fellow “progressives” know good and well what butters their bread.

As for invasion, I believe that the terms applies. I’m no big fan of government, but defense of our boundries and citizenship is a proper function of government. Uninvited illegal immigrants are violating the private property of American citizens, i.e., their country, and leftist politicians aim to use them as a political force to deAmericanize California and other parts of the country. Politicians with a orientation to La Raza, are definitely making native-born gringos feel unwelcome–which is one big reason why so many of them have left the once Golden State.

Nonsense. You’re proposing, or assuming that I’m proposing, that we need a method to round up and deport 100% of the illegal immigrants in this country. We don’t. We can use several methods, one of which would be to identify Hispanics that are likely illegal immigrants. I know what they look like — they look like Mestizos or Indios from Mexico or Central America — and they can be found outside my local Home Depot most any morning. It’s really not that hard.

Tim said: “The ‘Mestizo’ population of mixed European and native American ancestry is practically physically indistinguishable from many more recently created ‘Eurasians’ that a are produced by European with Asian parents, people from the Middleast or even many Southern Europeans.”

Nonsense again. You just haven’t looked hard enough. The Mestizos of Mexico look nothing like the “Eurasians” you describe. They are much darker skinned (on average) and have a very different body shape than mixed Asian-Europeans. They have a stocky build, but they are rather short — kind-of like miniature Polynesians.

Tim said: “Your Hispanic friend made a very good point when she said that the immigrants came to this country by and large to run away from the interventionist states in their own countries.”

That’s not what my friend said — you are mis-representing what I said. My friend said that her grand-parents (not herself) and other immigrants come to this country to make a better life for themselves — of course, that is not in dispute. She also has said many-a-time that she is thankful that her grand-parents left Mexico because Mexicans are so corrupt and lazy (I’m presenting her view of the situation here) — NOT because the state is so “interventionist.”

I don’t like Big Government either. Not at all. But we DO have police forces and a federal immigration control department. What the heck are they for if not to enforce the laws?!

But, no, I don’t have a particular fixation to have the government do all this clean-up of illegal immigrants. I’d be equally as happy (and perhaps even more satisfied with the results) to pay a private firm to do the work.

Tim said: “Put it in more concrete terms: the new houses, new lands, and newly patented ideas in the late 19th century would be valued much less if not for the immigrant labor and new residents taking them up. How many ‘White Anglo-Saxon Protestants’ were willing to give up prosperity, retirement and old age care in order to keep their communities ‘culturally pure’?”

Yeah, sell out one’s children’s heritage for material gain. Sounds familiar — like what’s going on today in this country (as well as Europe).

I’m not talking about keeping places “culturally pure”. I’m talking about preserving one’s nation — one’s territory — for posterity. So one’s children, grand-children, etc., will have a place to thrive — without competition from some other, unrelated people.

Why should my children have to share their political power and the economic benefits of this country with people wholly unrelated to them? I would never invite strangers into my home to live permanently AND give them a say in the running of my home. OF COURSE they would have different interests/goals in life from me and mine and would change the running of my household — to my children’s disadvantage.

“Already familiar with much of the relevant data, I wrote a detailed critique of Unz’s article for the new webzine Alternative Right, and Unz then responded to my critique. I won’t rehash all of the points of contention here, as interested readers can follow the links to decide for themselves who has the better of the argument. In my opinion, much of Unz’s response was already anticipated and answered in my original critique.

But one part of his response did bring some new data from California to bear on the question, so let me tackle that here. First, some quick background. Unz calculated the Hispanic incarceration rate divided by the white rate (call the result “HDW”) using state-level data published by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. He then crudely controlled for age and gender, and declared that HDW in California is only about 1.1. (I’m inferring that number from one of his bar graphs.)

I found his approach problematic for several reasons. I preferred to use American Community Survey data on institutionalization. (Note: Institutionalization does not include people in college dorms or military barracks, as has been alleged.) Using regression analysis to adjust for age, my HDW calculation for California comes to 1.53, which is substantially higher than Unz’s figure.

Though this is only one of many contentious issues, Unz suggested that a 2006 report from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) could help resolve it. The PPIC report uses incarceration data from California’s government that Unz says could be among the most reliable available. The report gives an HDW of 1.48, which Unz claims as a victory. Once we control for age, he says, the HDW comes down to just about his 1.1 estimate.

But Unz missed something important in the report. The 1.48 number is already fully controlled for age. I exchanged emails with one of the PPIC report’s coauthors to confirm this fact.

To reiterate, Unz’s estimate for California was 1.1, mine was 1.53, and the estimate of his suggested referee gives us 1.48. To the extent that the PPIC report can corroborate anyone’s analysis, it is mine—not his—that is confirmed.”